Cast your thoughts back to 1980 and you might recall it was the year Mount St Helens blew its top in the American north-west, the Cable News Network hit our screens for the first time, John Lennon was shot down in a New York street and the mind-twisting Rubik’s Cube made its debut.
If you’re a student of adventure bike riding history, however, you’ll certainly remember 1980 as the year BMW pulled the wraps off the R80G/S and overland motorcycle travel was changed forever.
Until then, if you wanted to ride around the world, you either did it on a self-modified road bike or tied all your worldly possessions onto a dual-purpose thumper and set forth into the great unknown.
Breaking new ground, BMW shoehorned its air-cooled boxer twin motor into a customised R65 road bike chassis with single-sided swingarm that was purpose designed for all-roads travel. They then labelled it a G/S in honour of the German words Gelande and Strasse, meaning off-road and road. And the rest, as they
